Despite decades of research, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) remains an important clinical challenge due to an incomplete understanding of the pathophysiological mechanisms. No FDA-approved drug therapy currently exists for treatment of humans with ARDS. There is accumulating evidence in rodents and humans suggesting that extracellular histones are strong drivers of inflammation and ...

Two copies of each core histone exist in every nucleosome; however, it is not known whether both histones within a nucleosome are required to be symmetrically methylated at the same lysine residues. We report that for most lysine methylation states, wild-type histones paired with mutant, unmethylatable histones in mononucleosomes have comparable methylation levels to bulk histones. Our results ...

Histones are small polycationic proteins located in the cell nucleus. Together, DNA and histones are integral constituents of the nucleosomes. Upon apoptosis, necrosis, and infection - induced cell death, histones are released from the cell. The extracellular histones have strong antimicrobial activity but are also cytotoxic and thought as mediators of cell death in sepsis. The antimicrobial ac...

Turnover of whole histones of brain and liver nuclei was studied after administration of 14C-lysine to adult mice. The radioactivity of histones and other nuclear and cytoplasmic proteins was determined at intervals from 2 hours to 245 days. Two fractions of cerebral histones with halflifetimes of 54 and 104 days and three fractions of hepatic histones with half-lifetimes of 18, 56, and 93 days...

An ADP-ribosyltransferase from turkey erythrocytes which utilizes proteins and low molecular weight guanidino compounds such as arginine and agmatine as ADP-ribose acceptors was stimulated by histones. The effect was specific in that choleragen, a bacterial mono(ADP-ribosyl)transferase that increased adenylate cyclase activity in animal cells, was not activated by histones. With the erythrocyte...

A Xenopus borealis somatic 5S RNA gene was assembled with either the complete octamer of histones, (H2A/H2B/H3/H4)2, or the (H3/H4)2 tetramer of histones that comprises the central protein kernel of the nucleosome. Gel-mobility shifts, DNase I protection, and immunoblotting assays demonstrate that the class III transcription factor IIIA (TFIIIA) readily interacts with 5S DNA associated with the...

Histones package DNA in all eukaryotes and play key roles in regulating gene expression. Approximately 150 base pairs of DNA wraps around an octamer of core histones to form the nucleosome, the basic unit of chromatin. Linker histones compact chromatin further by binding to and neutralizing the charge of the DNA between nucleosomes. It is well established that chromatin packing is regulated by ...

Five major histone proteins have been extracted from chromatin isolated from purified nuclei of the fungus, Aspergillus nidulans. These proteins had chromatographic properties which were similar to reference calf thymus histones and were purified to electrophoretic homegeneity by gel chromatography of Bio-Gel P10, Bio-Gel P60, and Sephadex G-100. Electrophoresis of these proteins in three diffe...